Topic: Philosophical theism

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The question is whether, apart from their polemics against theism, philosophical atheists have not shared a common set of positive views, a common set of philosophical convictions which set them off from other groups of thinkers.

Nevertheless, despite the variety of philosophical positions to which at one time or another in the history of thought atheists have subscribed, it seems to me that atheism is not simply a negative standpoint.

Philosophical atheists differ considerably on important points of detail in their accounts of how responsible claims to knowledge are to be established.

Philosophical or classical theism has essentially two parents: the theological and philosophical ideas developed in ancient Athens by philosophers like Plato, and the religious ideas developed among the ancient Jews.

Philosophers and theologians did not start with an empirical observation that God was omnipotent and then proceed to come to terms with how omnipotence should be understood in relation to God's other attributes.

Philosophers have also discussed the idea of a God who is somehow united with our souls, such that this union can be understood and perceived by those who study and learn enough.

Proponents of Open Theism allow that their view is at odds with the great majority of the Christian tradition in rejecting both meticulous providence and divine foreknowledge of what will contingently occur.

Philosophers have not come to an agreement over whether one might have counterfactual power over the past, or whether the past is instead fixed in a manner that rules out this power.

The most important philosophical argument for Open Theism is based on the idea that God’s foreknowledge of one’s actions is incompatible with those actions being free because one does not have the power to bring it about that God has never known something that He does in fact know.

Philosophicaltheism is a belief that God exists (or must exist), independent of the teaching or relevation of any particular religion.

Some philosophical theists are persuaded of God's existence by philosophical arguments, while others consider themselves to have a religiousfaith that need not be, or could not be, supported by rational argument.

Martin Gardner is a contemporary defender of philosophicaltheism who has been actively hostile to some religious traditions because of their belief that God has performed particular miracles or revelations.

Philosophers commonly use a metaphor that suggests that the chain of an argument, say for the existence of God, is only as strong as its weakest link.

The task for the philosophical theist, he thinks, is to attribute the excellences of both elements of these pairs to God and to eschew the invidious aspects of both elements.

Another way to categorize Hartshorne's theism is to see it as neoclassical in the sense that he relies on the classical or traditional theistic proofs for the existence of God and on the classical theistic metaphysics of being as first steps in the effort to think through properly the logic of perfection.

Theism is a philosophically or theologically reasoned understanding of reality that affirms that the source and continuing ground of all things is in God; that the meaning and fulfillment of all things lie in their relation to God; and that God intends to realize that meaning and fulfillment.

"Theism" is often used as the opposite of "atheism," the term for denial of the existence of God, and distinguishes a theist from an atheist or agnostic without attempting any technical philosophical or theological connection.

Though many philosophers and theologians in our century (Barthians, existentialists, logical emphiricists, e.g.), and at other times, have argued that it is impossible to give a rational justification of theism, nonetheless, many are ready to answer to the contrary.

Some of the new modes of philosophicaltheism are quite ingenious, such as Alvin Plantinga's effort to construe belief in God as a properly basic belief, i.e.

Like Schlesinger, Swinburne presents theism and naturalism as rival hypotheses: Either the universe is the uItimate, uncaused existent (naturalism), or the universe was created by a transcendent being who is uncaused and who has existed eternally (theism).

That is, theism posits the existence of a single uncompounded being with very simple attributes.

According to the article, the noted American philosopher Roderick Chisholm believes that the reason that atheism was so influential a generation ago is that the brightest philosophers were atheists; but, he says, today many of the brightest philosophers are theists, and they are using a tough-minded intellectualism in defense of that theism.

Philosophers such as Plantinga, Robert Adams, and William Rowe have, wholly apart from the ontological argument, defended the coherence of God as a logically necessary being,[25] and Leslie says nothing to impugn this notion.

I think it is clear as a result of these contributions that philosophicaltheism is very much alive and well today-indeed, when one recalls the bleak days of the "Death of God" movement in the sixties, it is not unfair to speak of a veritable resurrection of theism.

Macquarrie, whose own approach to philosophicaltheology is influenced by Heidegger and Bultmann, identifies several characteristics of postmodernism, including the limits of the intellect, the questioning of authority, the rejection of any unified world view, and the emphasis upon difference, the particular, pluralism and desire.

Although philosophical reflection on religion can be traced back to the origins of western philosophy, western philosophy of religion in the more strict sense is a modern development indebted in particular to the work of such philosophers as Hume, Kant and Hegel.

In recent years, however, some western philosophers of religion have challenged this view arguing that it is too narrow in scope, and that philosophers of religion need to extend the boundaries of their disci­pline to allow them to take into account other religious traditions and issues raised in those traditions.

The common theist solution to this philosophical dilemma was to simply reject logic and demand unquestioning faith on the part of the believer.

This was a philosophical advance in that it attempted to come to terms with at least the most obvious challenges to the notion of god as a human-like creator and did not require the complete rejection of logic.

Another philosophical advance of the Upanishadic period was that religion was transformed from the realm of bookish parroting of scriptures to the realm of advanced intellectual debate and polemics.

I'm not a professional philosopher, but I've had a few basic courses in philosophy over the years, and studied a good deal of the history of ideas, e.g., intellectual history.

Most contemporary versions of Theism are utterly dependent on teleological assumptions about the nature of the universe.

This philosophical point about rejecting teleological explanations of reality and past events was at the core of the dispute between my former-theist-turned-agnostic ex-wife and myself, an outright atheist.

Craig thus draws the conclusion to the first philosophical argument as follows: "[s]o the series of all past events must be finite and have a beginning.

The second philosophical argument for the beginning of the universe does not dispute the existence of the actual infinite, but instead points out that an actual infinite is not attained by adding new members to a potential infinite:

Second, the same risk that theism runs in using tentative scientific arguments is exactly the same risk that atheism runs.

By process theism we largely mean the particular conception of God which the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead fashioned in later life.

While God’s existence was first philosophically required in the revision of Whitehead’s first metaphysical synthesis which he appended to his Lowell Lectures of 1925, it would be presumptuous of us to claim that these reflections first caused Whitehead to become a theist once again.

As a philosopher, Whitehead was not overly concerned with this task, but for our purpose in providing an application of his thought to Christiantheology, it is basic and central.

The dominant worldview in our society, and therefore the greatest philosophical threat to Christianity, is that of modern humanism.

If Christians effectively engage this modern philosophical enemy of Christianity, then Christians would do well to understand its history, philosophy, its contradiction to biblical perspectives, and its opposition to social science findings.

Christians should also comprehend the objectives of feminism, the implications the acceptance of feminism would have to society, how feminists fight their battles in the political arena, and also how Christians must respond to the threats posed by feminism in modern times.

Some atheists have claimed that atheism is. However, some theists believe theism (at least for them) is a basic belief, just as the general reliability of sense experience is. Thus the burden of proof is on the atheist, at least according to this argument.

Theism explains the origin of the universe by using God as the first cause.

However, the theist could point to philosophical justification by saying the reason the universe is of finite age (albeit billions of years old) is that an infinite past can’t exist.

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This is evidenced by the voluminous amounts of philosophical texts on the topic written by the theist, atheist and agnostic alike.

We (philosophers) are fascinated by the question, and we are often compelled to think that it is perhaps the most important question there is for philosophy to answer; for indeed all of eternity may hang in the balance.

This meant we knew that the philosopher was either going to begin his philosophy with the question of God, infuse it with the same, or end on the topic.

Most contemporary philosophers, however, have narrowly focused on Proslogion II, and have consequently ignored Anselm's emphasis on a single argument in his work.ii In this paper I attempt to provide a logical map of Anselm's argument as a whole.

Anselm's claim of a single argument is vindicated by showing that the conclusions of the various subsidiary arguments serve as the premises of a more comprehensive, unified, and sustained argument.

Many philosophers have misconstrued Anselm's project as one of conjuring the existence of God from the definition of God as a perfect being.

The main thesis of the book is that a really careful analysis, plus a certain amount of what Kant called "transcendental deduction," of ordinary speech, points towards the kind of philosophicaltheism and idealistic epistemology so resourcefully, and with so much beauty and style, maintained by that strange genius, George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne.

The central nerve of the argument is that whereas we have no reason to believe in the existence of material things in themselves, we have every reason to believe in the existence of psychic things in themselves, personal spiritual substances.

Thus I find it impossible to agree with Cleobury that the way out of he present philosophical impasse and sterility is a return to some sort of idealism.

Comparing and contrasting the philosophical insights offered by the different world religions, and examining their application today, this concise yet comprehensive book covers everything from the arguments for and against the existence of God to the problem of suffering and the possibilities of life after death.

Second, there are a multitude of philosophic approaches, and it seems highly unlikely that any one single philosophic approach could triumph over all others and so form the basis of a global philosophy.

Second, beginning in the 1970s, a group of philosophers, most of them practicing Christians, seemed almost simultaneously to tire of writing about general issues in theism or the philosophy of religion, and began to address themselves to various topics in Christiantheology, albeit from different philosophical and denominational perspectives.